Twin Peaks, third season, sixth episode: Don't die

Content: Police take Cooper to Dougie's home after he is found loitering outside his workplace. Janey-E receives a photo of Dougie with Jade and chastises Cooper for Dougie's infidelity but she seems to be willing to turn the page and support her husband. Cooper draws cryptic images of ladders and staircases on Dougie's case files, guided by lights on the pages. Mike from the Black Lodge asks Cooper to wake up and to not die. Dougie's boss is angry when he sees what Cooper did with the files until he recognizes a pattern in the drawings conveying information he finds disturbing, and finally thanks Cooper. Meanwhile, Janey-E meets the two criminals demanding $52,000 from Dougie and gives them $25,000, calling it her "only offer." Duncan Todd receives a message on his laptop and pulls an envelope marked with a black spot from his safe. A man with an ice pick receives an identical envelope containing photos of Dougie and Lorraine, then enters Lorraine's office and stabs her and two of her coworkers to death. Albert finds Diane, Cooper's assistant, in a bar. In Twin Peaks, Richard Horne meets a mysterious drug supplier named Red. He speeds recklessly in his truck, running over and killing a young boy. Carl Rodd witnesses the incident and attempts to comfort the boy's mother. Hawk drops a coin in the bathroom and sees that the stall manufacturer's logo is a Nez Percé chief. Noticing two screws missing from the stall door, he finds several written pages inside.

Analysis: Let's try to go chronologically here. First of all, I think Douglas Jones told the truth about one of his colleagues being a liar. The patterns he seems to discover with some help from the Black Lodge's residents seem to show that one of his colleagues faked wrongful insurance claims to get some cash and share it with two police officers who would approve his version of the events that never ever took place. However, giving this information to his boss could put Douglas Jones in a very dangerous position because the behavior of his coworkers has grown a little bit more tense. In addition to this, Douglas Jones seems to have several skeletons in his own closet and I'm not only referring to his gambling addiction and weakness for prostitutes. In the previous episode, one co-worker made an allusion to Douglas Jones as if Dougie had done something illegal or at least secret. Douglas Jones faces the constant risk to lose his wife, job or even life because of his former life as Douglas Jones and his new life as Dale Cooper. This could soon lead to an intense showdown. The next thing to analyze is the targeting of Dougie and Lorraine. Who wants to get them killed and why? My guess is that Evil Cooper is behind all of this. He wants Lorraine to die because she knows too much about the device related to the Black Lodge in Buenos Aires as Evil Cooper wants to be the only one to possess, know and control everything. He obviously wants Douglas Jones to die because Dale Cooper is the only one who could bring Evil Cooper back to the Black Lodge or even harm him. Hiring a hitman is Evil Cooper's way to protect himself and still being active despite being in prison. The third element to analyze is rather simple. Diane's appearance means that she is the one who is going to meet Evil Cooper to see what's wrong with him. My guess is that she will realize that he isn't who he pretends to be. The fourth element to analyze is Red's appearance. Is this guy just a drug lord or is he more than just that? I believe there is more to him because his magic trick doesn't just look like a trick, it looks like a supernatural capacity. Red might as well be a demon from the Black Lodge and could be or become an associate of Evil Cooper. I know this is a bold guess but that would be my prediction. The fifth and last thing to analyze are the pages Hawk finds in the bathroom of Twin Peak's Sheriff Department. First of all, where do these pages come from? There are two possibilities in my book. One could be that these are missing pages from Laura Palmer's secret diary or personal notes made by Dale Cooper. Anyway, I believe these notes are related to the fact that Dale Cooper is still caught in the Black Lodge. This is what the Log Lady wanted Hawk to find out. The second question is: Who put these pages there? Could it have been Laura Palmer herself before she died? I don't think this is probable because she didn't get these kinds of instructions and couldn't have predicted what would happen after her death. Could it have been Dale Cooper? I don't think so either because it's not like him to hide notes in a bathroom door. He would have thought of another way to send his colleagues or friends from Twin Peaks a message. Could it have been Leland Palmer? It's probable that he tore some pages out of his daughter's diary to blur the fact that he was controlled by BOB. Maybe Leland Palmer had a short and lucid moment and wanted to hide these pages in a safe place before BOB could possess him again and destroy them. Since there is no safer place than a police station, this theory seems the most likely to me.

Description: This episode is much better than the two previous ones and nearly reaches the level of the opening three episodes. The start of the episode is a little bit slow with Douglas Jones' struggles at home and at his workplace but the episode quickens up the pace after twenty minutes or so. Naomie Watts' character Janey-E Jones gets some more depth which is interesting, John Pirruccello's character Deputy Chad Broxford becomes more and more an interesting antagonist and we get some background information about Robert Forster's Sheriff Frank Truman and his deranged wife Doris Truman portrayed by Candy Clark. Many fans adored the short scene where Laura Dern is revealed to be Diane Evans, Special Agent Dale Cooper's former secretary. However, the most exciting moments for me are the appearances of two new creepy characters. First of all, we meet Balthazar Getty's Red, a mysterious drug lord who acts like a menacing sociopath who can shift from being casually friendly to becoming coldly menacing from one moment to the other. The magic trick he performs to confuse, dominate and menace Eamon Farren's Richard Horne, who is also a brutal psychopath, is both surreal and intense. The second new character is short-grown contract killer called Ike ''The Spike'' Stadtler, played by Christophe Zajac-Denek, who brutally slaughters one of his targets as well as two witnesses but only shows emotions when he realizes that his weapon broke. These two new villains, along with the developments of Chad Broxford and Richard Horne, are very promising for the upcoming episodes and show how strong the antagonists are in this third season. Let's just hope that a few powerful protagonists come around to support Dale Cooper.

Favorite scene: There were many stunning scenes in this episode but my favorite is the intense hit-and-run scene. The build-up is dramatic and tense, the climax is heartbreaking and horrifying and the aftermath is shocking at first but becomes almost spiritual and comforting. These three minutes are probably the most intense so far in the series and bring back the spirit that defined Twin Peaks in the first two seasons as well as in the movie.